This invention relates to integrated circuits including memory structures and relates to methods for fabricating such integrated circuits and memory structures and, more particularly, relates to structures including tunnel junctions and methods for fabricating and using such tunnel-junction structures.
As computer and other electrical equipment prices continue to drop, the manufacturers of storage devices, such as memory devices and hard drives, are forced to lower the cost of their components. At the same time, markets for computers, video games, televisions and other electrical devices are requiring increasingly larger amounts of memory to store images, photographs, videos, movies, music, and other storage intensive data. Thus, besides reducing costs, manufacturers of storage devices must also increase the storage density of their devices. This trend of increasing memory storage density while reducing costs required to create the storage has been on-going for many years, and even optical storage such as CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RIW, DVD, and DVD-R variants are being challenged by device size limitations and costs. There is accordingly a need for economical, high capacity memory structures and economical methods for fabricating such structures, especially methods that are compatible with methods used to fabricate other elements of integrated circuits.